BAKU, Azerbaijan, May 4
By Leman Zeynalova - Trend:
CO2 emissions are set to drop to the lowest level since the Second World War, Trend reports citing the International Energy Agency (IEA).
“The stunning declines in energy demand in Q1 2020 resulted in a major drop in global CO2 emissions, surpassing any previous declines. Not only are annual emissions in 2020 set to decline at an unprecedented rate, the decline is set to be almost twice as large as all previous declines since the end of World War II combined,” reads the report.
The IEA report shows that global CO2 emissions were over 5 percent lower in Q1 2020 than in Q1 2019, mainly due to a 8 percent decline in emissions from coal, 4.5 percent from oil and 2.3 percent from natural gas.
“CO2 emissions fell more than energy demand, as the most carbon-intensive fuels experienced the largest declines in demand during Q1 2020,” reads the report.
IEA said that CO2 emissions declined the most in the regions that suffered the earliest and largest impacts of COVID-19; China (-8 percent) the European Union (-8 percent) and the United States (-9 percent) with milder weather conditions also making an important contribution to the emissions decline in the United States.
IEA believes that global CO2 emissions are expected to decline even more rapidly across the remaining nine months of the year, to reach 30.6 Gt for the 2020, almost 8 percent lower than in 2019.
“This would be the lowest level since 2010. Such a reduction would be the largest ever, six times larger than the previous record reduction of 0.4 Gt in 2009 due to the financial crisis and twice as large as the combined total of all previous reductions since the end of World War II.”